this dark heart is mine
by Kherezae
Summary: darkpilot / General Organa didn't tell many Kylo Ren's true identity, and if Poe's honest with himself, he knows (lots of reasons) why. But it's hard to accept that she never told him, not even after Kylo Ren flayed his mind open, ripping through his memories in search of the map to Luke Skywalker. [Discontinued]
1. cut out the past and burn it down

Kylo doesn't recognize him at first. He hasn't seen Poe Dameron in… seventeen years? He has died and remade himself in that time. Poe Dameron isn't even a blink of memory anymore.

Until he is kneeling before Kylo Ren, defiant as ever — only kneeling because his legs were kicked from under him — and B— _Kylo_ squats to meet him at eye level before he's even considered what he's doing.

It's a habit that hails from another life. A habit he learned from this man, _before_. Before either of them were men. He ignores the memory, instead delving into Poe's head. Why is he here? Why is this ghost showing up on Kylo's boarding ramp after half a lifetime?

"So, who talks first — you talk first? I talk first?"

"The old man gave it to you." Just a hint of it in his thoughts, but it's enough.

Poe is talking — he still has that same mouth on him from when they were kids — but Kylo stands and looks to the trooper behind him. "Search him."

Nothing. So he had the map, but not any longer. They'll have to force it out of him. Kylo's gut roils with fury. "Put him on board," he says, his mask modulating a voice that might not contain his anger otherwise.

Why this man? Is Grandfather testing him? Poe factors into many of the only happy memories he still carries of his childhood. The only person he could ever really count as a friend. And now he's here, on the wrong side, protecting information Kylo needs to get to _Skywalker_.

He gives the order to wipe out the village. Too much fight in the lot of them. The First Order demands that weak links be purged to strengthen the whole, and a village that resists the simple questioning of an old wanderer cannot be tolerated.

Leaving the village to burn, he sweeps up into his command ship.

* * *

Kylo lets Poe's screams fade to background noise as he rakes through his mind for signs of the map. He's got a good defense for someone who isn't Force-sensitive. The memories Kylo rip loose are too often familiar and come like a punch to the gut.

Poe doesn't know him like this, not really, but he does know he killed Ben Solo. Memories of Ben are close to the surface, confronted by his killer. The memories splinter and fragment, seen half through Poe's eyes and half through his own. Sitting under the Force-sensitive tree Uncle L— _Skywalker_ gifted to Poe's family, Poe's smiling face crowned by dark curls, ears Ben hasn't grown into peeking through his black hair. (Is that the source of Poe's strength under this kind of duress?)

Poe defending Ben from too-curious friends who _pushed_ and _pushed_ until Ben could do nothing but push back, only his push is backed by the Force and the boy goes stumbling. When the boy complains, ten-year-old Poe simply says, "Kind of asked for it, didn't you?" and it's the first time someone has _defended_ Ben for using the Force to protect himself.

Well, except for the voice. Grandfather's voice. That one encouraged him to use the Force to protect himself, to make himself stronger.

Kylo rips through the memory, searching deeper, hunting for the image of Lor San Tekka, for the map, for _what happened next_.

Instead he's slammed with an unfamiliar memory:

Poe at eighteen, grieving the death of Ben Solo, killed by a padawan-gone-rogue. By Kylo Ren. (By himself.) He's already at the academy, training to be a pilot for the Republic. He doesn't even hear it from General Organa herself; it's an offhand comment, cadets whispering, "Did you hear General Organa lost her son?"

"Luke Skywalker was training a new generation of Jedi and one of them went rogue."

"No way, that's just myth. Luke Skywalker? Please."

"Where have you been living, under a rock? You've seen General Organa and you still think Skywalker's a myth?"

But Poe is stumbling away, back to his quarters, disbelief settling like fuzz in his head. He pulls up his holo immediately but then stops. What's he going to do? Demand the details of what happened from a grieving mother? Ask why he wasn't _told_? He hasn't seen Ben in almost four years.

Guilt sweeps in through his gut. If he'd known, would he have kept better contact?

Kylo seizes that thread to bring him back to himself. There is a melancholy to Poe's memories of Ben, an old, dusty, antique feeling. He remembers now, faced with Ben's killer, but he hasn't dredged up these memories in years. These memories are like gravity inside Kylo, but Poe was always more to him than he was to Poe.

The distance is a tool. He uses it. He cuts off the avenue to _Ben_ , focusing instead on what Poe was doing on that miserable dustbowl of a planet. Lor San Tekka. That insufferable old man always did know more than was good for him.

He nearly misses it. Nearly skips over the thought of the orange-and-white BB unit. It's too tied up in those old memories, the time spent with his head close to Poe's working on customizing the droid. That Poe still flies with the droid is a cold ache. He is devoted to the machine, his feelings for a _robot_ more intense than the old, cool memories of Ben.

And the droid has the map. Of course it does.

Kylo pulls free of Poe's mind and stands with his hands fisted as he fights to calm his breath. Poe's breath rasps as his head lolls against the side of the interrogation chair, torn apart by Kylo's brutal ransack of his mind.

This is done. It's done. Kylo turns his back on Poe and leaves the interrogation chamber. Confronted by General Hux in the hall, his voice is calm, would be even without the mask. "It's in a droid. A BB unit."

* * *

By the time the klaxons ring Poe Dameron's escape and the destruction of the control terminal above the main bay, Kylo has properly distanced himself. He's allowed Poe — a link to his past — to distract him until now. Maybe if he hadn't, FN-2187 wouldn't have gotten away with the prisoner.

There's a reason the Supreme Leader bans connections to Kylo's past.

But they're already dispatching squadrons to track down the pilot, the treacherous stormtrooper, and the droid. When Kylo Ren meets Poe Dameron again, he'll be ready.

* * *

 **I also write on AO3 under this same penname, some of it nsfw, so... yay? And my tumblr is sheikahtrainee. Thanks for reading!**


	2. take a breath (though it aches)

The Resistance has been a whirlwind since Starkiller Base, which is good in that it has helped distract Poe from Finn lying unconscious and broken in the medcenter. Between R2-D2 providing the rest of the map to Luke Skywalker, moving their base to a new secure location, scrambling the remains of the Resistance, and pulling in refugees and new recruits, there's not been much breathing room.

And recon. Recon missions feel like they've tripled, but maybe that's just because of everything else that's going on too.

Still, when Poe has a spare moment, he can often be found in the medcenter checking in on Finn. The bantha-brained hero who took up a lightsaber against Kylo Ren — the Dark Force user who could stop a blaster bolt or freeze a man in place. Poe should know. In terms of helpless moments in his life, having every voluntary muscle in his body suspended by the Force tops the list. (Right behind Kylo Ren ripping through his memories, but he doesn't like to think about that.)

Poe wishes he could have seen it. He heard the highlights from General Organa, who'd gotten the story from Rey (who Poe finally got to meet, if briefly), but he can't quite imagine what it must have been like.

Now Rey's off to train as a Jedi with Luke Skywalker and Finn's recovering from a spinal cord nearly severed by Kylo Ren's lightsaber, and the Resistance is ticking its way closer to some sort of stability again.

It takes three weeks for Finn to wake up, which is about how long the med staff predicted. They'd explained the complicated process of healing Finn's spine and the stillness it would require, but all Poe had really heard was _maybe_ and _with luck_ and _there's a good chance_. He'd wondered how much they were downplaying the reality of the situation, whether the slim chance that Finn would be paralyzed or even _never wake up_ was something that should keep him up at nights the way it sometimes did.

Given how busy he's been, it's not really surprising that Finn wakes while Poe is away. When he comes back, one of his first tasks is always to have BB-8 link the medcenter for updates. He doesn't always have time to visit, but he likes to know how Finn's doing. After a long reconnaissance flight along the border of the Outer Rim and the former neutral zone, Poe returns to news that Finn's been awake on and off all day.

Before BB-8 finishes relaying the report, Poe's already moving, the post-flight check of his X Wing abandoned. BB-8 starts to roll after him, beeping and clicking a question, but Poe shoots over his shoulder, "Stay here, buddy. Tell Jess where I went?"

The med tech on duty is a Duro woman Poe recognizes and who clearly knows exactly why he's here; she lifts a teal finger against her mouth, her red eyes glowing. "He's asleep," she says.

"But he's been awake?"

She nods and busies her hands with what looks like organizing a medkit. "On and off all day, and utterly dismayed to be stuck on bedrest."

"I'll wait with him," Poe says. It's a statement; they're harder to refuse than requests.

She smiles without looking his way. "There's a chair over there" — she inclines her head toward it — "but you may have noticed it's night. He might sleep through. Human biology does tend to sync circadian rhythms with the daylight schedule of whatever planet —"

"Thanks," Poe says, because she doesn't seem likely to finish speaking soon, and he moves past her to grab the chair and maneuver it into Finn's room. There are lots of cots separated just by light plasteel dividers, but Finn was afforded his own room because of his condition and his long stay.

Which is just fine with Poe, because it means they're not on display for anyone who walks into the medcenter. He sets his chair beside Finn's bed and runs his stare down the young man's form: glossy brown skin and pale hospital cloth and a drape of thin blue blanket. Does he look different from the last time Poe visited?

Maybe he's imagining it, but Poe thinks so. More relaxed, like sleep rather than induced unconsciousness.

Poe watches him what seems like a long time, but he must have fallen asleep because suddenly he's opening his eyes to a view of the medcenter ceiling. "Poe," he hears, and he jolts — that's what woke him in the first place. That familiar voice wrapped around his name. Finn's laughter brightens the air as Poe lifts his head from where it fell back against the chair, wincing at the sharp pulse of pain from sleeping with his neck at such an awkward angle.

"Yeah, I didn't think that looked comfortable," Finn says, his smile a flash of white teeth. His bed's inclined enough to allow him to sit up and see Poe. He looks… good. Not like he's been in an induced coma for three weeks.

Poe raises a hand to the back of his neck and massages the tense muscles there. "Definitely not," he agrees. He leans forward until he can rest one forearm along the edge of Finn's bed. "Good to have you back, buddy."

"Good to be back." Finn blows a breath out through curved lips (Poe's heart doesn't stutter at that, no). "Three weeks. What have I missed? They told me Rey went to train with Luke Skywalker" — there's wonder in his tone at that — "and that we left D'Qar, but not much else."

There are things Poe wants to ask, questions with answers that have got to be far more interesting than what he has to say, but he's not going to deny the man answers. "A lot of the First Order went down with Starkiller Base, but not enough," he says. "They had plenty of time to evacuate a good portion of their troops and ships. We lost about half our fleet." That's still a harsh memory. They lost a lot of good pilots that day. "We are getting some new Resistance recruits — some of the Republic forces who were outside the Hosnian system when it was destroyed, some people who finally recognize the First Order as bad news. But it's not enough. We're still outnumbered. We're scrambling to train new recruits, shore up losses, flesh out what we know about the Order with fresh recon…" He sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

"So it's not looking great," Finn says, but there's still optimism underlying those words, and it makes Poe want to smile.

"Not right now," he admits instead. "But things looked worse for the Rebel Alliance facing the Empire. We'll figure it out."

"And Rey?" There's a soft sort of anxiety in Finn's voice.

Poe's chest fills with a warm, bittersweet ache. He'd be blind not to see the bond between the two of them. It was in Finn's determination to get to Starkiller Base, in Rey's soft goodbye, in the promise she asked of Poe to watch out for Finn while she was gone. "She's been gone two weeks," Poe says. Maybe a little better than two weeks. She left almost right away. "General Organa gets regular updates. She asks about you." Something Poe only knows from walking in on the tail end of one of Rey's holos when he arrived for a meeting with the general, but it makes Finn's face light up, so he's glad he shared it.

"Can I talk to her?"

"Definitely, bud," Poe says with a smile. "You can send her a holo. I'm sure she's anxious to hear from you."

Finn settles against his pillows, his expression warm and satisfied.

As the silence spools out, Poe's questions well to the surface, begging to be asked. He's not sure how to broach it or whether Finn will want to talk about it — he knows his time aboard the _Finalizer_ is not something he relishes being reminded of — but he only got the barest outline of what happened from General Organa, and he needs to know. "What happened there?"

Finn's eyes flick to his, and then his jaw tightens, his lips pulling into a frown. Poe's caught between waiting and _nevermind, don't_ , but waiting wins. It takes a few moments, Finn's stare distant and wavering. Poe recognizes the look. Working back through the memory, reliving it, parsing it into sensible statements of fact. Finding the way to tell it.

Finally Finn says, "Finding Rey was easy. She practically found us." He chuffs a short breath of laughter. "She'd escaped! She was wandering the base, avoiding patrols of troops. And lowering the shields wasn't that hard once we caught Captain Phasma and threatened her into doing it for us."

His expression sobers. "We started to head back for the _Falcon_ after that, but we had these bombs with us, and the squadrons — you guys — you weren't making much progress on the oscillator. So we decided to give you a hand. Blow you an opening."

They did that. Poe ended up flying into the oscillator through that opening, half-reckless and half-necessary. That probably — no, definitely saved the mission. He nods, encouraging Finn to go on.

"Rey and I were up top. She made an opening for Han Solo and Chewie, and they planted the explosives. But Kylo Ren was down there too. He… he'd come for Han Solo."

Kylo Ren killed Han Solo, Poe knows that much. It was in the bullet points of the debriefing, in the grief weighing General Organa down in spare moments ever since. From the look on Finn's face, hearing how it happened isn't going to be easy. Witnessing it happen… Poe reaches out, laying a hand over Finn's wrist.

"Solo tried to talk to him. To get him to come back to the Light."

Poe's brow knits. "What?" This was the man who killed Han Solo's son. Whatever Finn saw, he must have been mistaken.

Finn meets Poe's eyes, and there's something raw in that stare. "You didn't know."

"Know what?"

"Kylo Ren is — was — Han Solo's son," Finn says.

The world falls away, leaving Poe with vertigo thrumming in his ears — that moment before an atmo dive, when the engines quiet and gravity starts to kick in. "He — what? No. I would have — General Organa —"

Words fail him utterly, an occurrence so rare for Poe Dameron he can count the moments he's been speechless on his fingers. Few have had the same ache as this one.

Finn's watching him, and Poe's thoughts are a maelstrom roaring in the distance, but coming in fast and violent. He needs something — anything — to distract from this breathless moment, so he says, "Go on," but he's not really listening.

Ben Organa-Solo. A boy dead — is it eighteen years now? Seventeen? Longer than Poe knew him. Killed by a psychotic Dark Jedi, Kylo Ren. General Organa would have _told_ him it was Ben, wouldn't she? Maybe not — okay, maybe not right away. They hadn't seen much of each other in the years before Ben died or — or whatever happened to him.

But when he joined the Resistance?

When he started flying missions that could (and did) put him in Kylo Ren's path?

Before Kylo Ren _went through his head_ , ripped through his memories — oh Maker, most of them memories about _Ben_ —

She let him go out into that, fall into that murderer's hands

(his friend)

— without warning him?

She let him come back from _her son_ flaying his mind open without telling him who'd been behind that mask?

Force, did Leia not know it was Ben?

No, she had to, she had to know.

"Poe?"

Some dim part of Poe's mind has followed vaguely along with Finn's words. Not enough to truly process them, but enough that a bone-weary ache of _acceptance_ settles into his bones. There's no way he made a mistake. Kylo Ren is Ben Organa-Solo.

"Sorry, bud, I…" Poe pauses, because there's no good explanation but the truth, and it's a hard thing to share. "I didn't know." Finn's eyes are still searching his face. He hesitates. Steels himself. "I knew him, before. I knew Ben. But I didn't know…"

"Oh," Finn says, the recognition tightening between his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"Not your fault. But I — let's talk about something else, for now?"

Finn nods, then keys at a datapad beside his bed. "It's late, local time," he says. "If you need to get some sleep…"

Poe takes a good look at Finn before answering. Poe is way too keyed up to sleep right now, but if Finn looks tired, he'll leave him to rest. Maybe work on his X Wing. Anything to avoid what he _wants_ and _needs_ to do right now, but can't (not at this hour, not practical) and probably shouldn't (there's no way he makes it through this conversation without being insubordinate). He'll put it off while his temper settles, while he can't reasonably drag the general from her quarters in the middle of the night. But soon he's going to have a conversation with General Organa, and she's going to give him answers.

Fortunately Finn looks awake, restless even, so Poe grabs onto the excuse to stay. "You're going to get sick of bedrest fast," he says. "I'll have to teach you some card games to help you pass the time."

Finn grins. "Sounds great," he says. And then, with more weight to it: "Thanks, Poe."


	3. you bury your grief

Jess sends Poe away when he arrives at the hangar for his morning flight check. "I can do it, Poe — you look like death, would you go get some sleep?"

"I appreciate the thought, but I can't just up and take a morning off," Poe says. He runs a hand through his hair and lets out a sigh that puffs his cheeks.

But Jess is shaking her head. And wow, she looks way too awake right now, with her dark eyes glinting and her mouth curving into a smile. "I already checked. The general approved it."

Poe narrows his eyes at her. "How —"

"We've all seen how you are with Finn," Jess says, a dry slant to her words. "I saw you slumping back to your room after spending, what, all night in the medcenter probably?" She raises an eyebrow at Poe, but apparently doesn't need actual confirmation because before he can respond she's barreling onward. "So I commed the general, and I didn't even have to ask once I explained the situation. Take the morning, Dameron. That's an order."

Okay, there's no coming back from that self-satisfied grin on her face. Pava getting to legitimately give him an order? That'll be coming back to bite him in the ass for weeks. But Poe nods and claps Jess on the shoulder. "Thanks, Jess."

Of course, once outside the hangar, he's torn: his quarters to crash, or straight to the general? In a lot of ways Leia is like family, and giving him this morning off — knowing that he would need it, after staying up most of the night with Finn — is just another example of her looking out for him.

But she wasn't looking out for him when she sent him out into her son's clutches completely unaware. A hot coal of anger shifts in his gut, sending waves almost like nausea rolling out through his system.

No. He's tired. Jess is right; he needs to sleep. Confronting the general now, when he's exhausted and with his control fraying around the edges, would do more harm than good. So Poe sighs and retires to his quarters.

Following orders. Which isn't something he's had a problem with since leaving the New Republic Fleet. When you can trust and believe in your commanding officers, orders are simple. Not always easy, but simple: you follow them.

But what if your commander has been keeping secrets from you that could break your heart?

* * *

Poe has trouble falling asleep until he resolves to wake early enough to talk to the general before his evening patrol run. He asks BB-8 to wake him at 1300 hours and then he closes his eyes and he's gone.

And he sleeps deeply enough that when the jolt of his bunk finally starts him awake, it takes a moment to orient. BB-8's chittering about how he wanted a wake-up call but sleeps like a tauntaun, and gradually Poe pulls the threads of consciousness together. BB-8 must have knocked up against his bunk to wake him. It's not often that the droid's Binary chatter isn't enough to wake him, but it's also not often that he's asleep in the middle of the day. His system's all out of whack.

"Hey, sorry buddy, thanks for the wake-up call," Poe says, leaning on one elbow to look at the droid.

BB-8 beeps his worries that maybe Poe needs more sleep, rolling back a bit but keeping his photoreceptor trained on Poe.

"I'm fine. I'll sleep tonight, don't worry." He sits up, looks at the crumpled pile where the clothes he'd thrown across the foot of his bed must have slid off onto the floor. He could really use some time in the fresher. Returning his attention to BB-8, he asks, "Could you send a message to General Organa for me? Tell her I'd like to meet with her if she has a little time."

BB-8 whirs confirmation and Poe lays his clothes out flat again (maybe any wrinkles will come out?) and slips into the fresher. It'll give the general time to respond, and hey, at least he won't smell like armpit when he sees her. He's finishing up in the shower when the droid rattles off General Organa's response from the doorway to his room.

Poe mutters a curse under his breath — he didn't expect her to be ready _right away_ — and rushes through drying and dressing so he can make it to the general's office while she has a moment. BB-8 trundles along behind him until he reaches his destination, and then he turns and half-kneels. "Go check on the X Wing, will you buddy?" It's to give the droid something to do, and BB-8 knows it. But he beeps a somewhat reluctant confirmation and rolls off toward the airfield.

Straightening, Poe knocks on Leia's door. "It's Poe," he says, which is a good indication of how personal this is. Right now he's not Commander Dameron or even Poe Dameron, he's just Poe, who has known Leia and her family since he was small.

The door slides open and Leia beckons Poe into her office. There's the soft _wssh_ of the door closing, and for a moment he just watches her, one hand gripping his opposite wrist behind him. "Poe, what is it?" Leia asks; that's genuine concern in her eyes.

There's a new weight to her. Poe thought he had it measured up in the weeks following Starkiller Base — she'd just lost her husband, after all — but now he reassesses. His heart is a black hole, its gravity ripping at everything else inside him, heavy and dark. Another piece clicks into place: _Kylo Ren_ killed her husband, which means _Ben_ did it. Her son killed her husband. His own father.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Poe asks, his voice soft.

It only takes a moment, and then her expression shifts: her brow draws tight, her eyes close a moment too long, her frown wavers between anger and sorrow. "About Ben," she says. Not a question.

"He was — he was my friend, and I thought he died." Poe's hands clench, one into a fist, the other tightening around his wrist behind his back. "He ripped through my head, memories of _him_ and I thought it was his killer going through — through those thoughts. But it was him. And you didn't tell me."

Leia meets his eyes, and hers are sad but firm, solid, like the general herself. She is made of steel. She is the strongest person Poe knows. "I've questioned whether to tell you at every step along the way, Poe," she admits. There's a pause, and he feels like she's studying him, measuring him. "Would it have helped? The Ben you knew is gone. I couldn't tell just anyone about him. And Poe, I know I can trust you, it has nothing to do with that. But if you didn't have to know, I thought, wouldn't it be easier not to?"

No, Poe wants to say, then… yes, maybe. But Leia's not done.

"It hurts to know that it's my Ben under that mask, that he's done those things. To wonder… what he'll do next. To have to plan for it. I have to bear that burden, but you didn't need to." There's something almost pleading hidden under the solidity of her expression. "Poe, you're a pilot. The chances of you even running into Kylo Ren were extraordinarily small."

"But I did," Poe says, his voice hot.

Leia concedes a nod.

Some of the heat retreats from his tone. It leaves traces of ache in his chest. "You should have told me. After, at least."

She stands now, stepping around her desk to approach Poe and put a hand around one of his arms. Her grip is strong, firm. "You're right, and I'm sorry."

He still feels the ghost of Kylo — of Ben — sifting through his memories. Flashes of that masked figure that exuded alternating hot and cold, the cruel timbre of his voice through the mask's modulator, juxtapose against Ben under the tree in Poe's yard or running his hands along Mom's A Wing or in their kitchen sharing a meal with them. What does Ben look like now, under all of… that?

Maybe he understands why Leia would keep this from him. He tries to measure the hurt and disbelief and quantify what it must feel like for her, for _Ben's mother,_ but there's no way to compare it. Poe has always empathized powerfully with others. It's almost laughable that he came here expecting his anger to boil over. It's easy to let your hurt drive your thoughts when you're pounding against the walls of your own head, but faced with a mother's grief…

Poe forces himself to relax out of his stiff stance, shifting one arm from behind himself to grip Leia's arm. "What happened?" he asks.

She takes a couple steps back, drawing him along so that they can each lean a hip against her desk. "It was Snoke," she says, anger flashing through her eyes. "He got into Ben's head when he was just a child. I'm not even sure how young he was when it started. But he whispered dark thoughts into Ben's head, and I didn't — I didn't fully understand what was happening. I didn't know who it was, at the time."

Her eyes drifted down toward her desk as she spoke, but now they snap back to Poe's. "I made a mistake, I think, sending him away to Luke. I thought Luke could help. But I think… Ben felt abandoned. Things got worse for him. Luke was starting to piece together what was happening to him, but it was too late. Snoke somehow… somehow convinced him that he needed to kill all the Jedi."

Poe knew Kylo Ren killed all the young Jedi Luke had brought together to train, but now he's picturing it fresh, and it's Ben striking them down. Guilt stabs deep in Poe's gut, twists and bleeds out ache. "I should have known."

Leia breathes a short, dark puff of laughter. "Known what? You were a child yourself."

"We were friends. And I didn't even talk to him in the last couple years he —" _was alive,_ he wants to say, but he trips over the words. Was Ben? After he left to train with Luke, Poe sent a few holos, but gradually they grew less frequent, and then a couple of times Ben didn't respond and… he didn't push. "I should have been there for him."

Leia fixes him with a firm, maternal stare. "You see, Poe, this is part of why I didn't want to tell you. This isn't guilt for you to carry. If anyone failed Ben, it was me, and it was Han. But you were a child. You were a good friend to Ben, better than anyone else he knew. But he wasn't your responsibility."

 _You were a good friend to Ben._ Not good enough. Poe knows, he _knows_ he should have done more. But he keeps it to himself. He can't do anything about it now. "What comes next?" he asks.

With a sigh, Leia says, "We keep fighting the First Order. We find a way to bring Snoke down."

"What about" — _Ben_ — "Kylo Ren?"

The look she levels on Poe is heavy, settling a weight of dread on his shoulders. "We're not completely sure he escaped Starkiller Base," she admits. "But I suspect he did."

Poe doesn't ask how she would know. It's easy to overlook the fact that she's Force-sensitive, sometimes, but talking about Ben makes it hard to forget. He trusts her judgment. After all, she would feel it if her son died, wouldn't she?

"He killed his father," Leia admits, a tension in her voice that verges on breaking. "I believe there's still Light in him — I want to believe it — but I have to admit that… if it comes down to it, he may have to be taken out."

She doesn't want that. It's completely clear in every aching line of her body. Despite everything, Ben is her son, and she wants him back.

Conflict roils like storm clouds through Poe's chest. He doesn't know what he wants. It's too raw. Kylo Ren in his head, tearing his walls down, shredding through precious memories of the two of them. A cruel voice that shows no sign of remembering Poe.

Quiet, awkward Ben following Poe up into the branches of the tree in his backyard, a rare, relaxed grin spreading across his face.

That barely contained lightsaber arcing through Lor San Tekka's chest, and the cry that rips from Poe's throat in response — the blaster bolt discharging as he runs, but both of them rendered motionless with one gesture. That moment of helpless awe/rage.

Did Ben even remember it was him? Or has he been so twisted and warped that there's no trace left of the Ben that Poe once knew?

Maker, Leia has lived with this helpless anguish for fifteen years. "I'm so sorry," Poe says finally, and he grasps her shoulders as he looks into her eyes.

Her eyes shine a little brighter and she nods. Poe can't help it. He pulls her into a hug. Tries to fathom the strength of a woman who has lost her world, her husband, and her son, but still commands the Resistance. The dual ache of wanting to forgive her son, to bring him home, but needing to be willing to order his death, if necessary.

When he pulls away, Poe taps a fist over his heart. "We'll get this thing done, General. Whatever you need done, I'm with you. Just say the word."

If nothing else, Poe's more certain than ever that the Resistance is where he belongs. There is no one whose orders he would trust more than General Organa. So he forces the fresh ache down, burying it to focus on the things that matter _now._

Poe is, by now, an expert at burying grief in work. He did it the first time Ben died. He did it with Muran. He's done it with the pilots they've lost in the war since. This will be no different. As he leaves General Organa, he has just enough time to stop in on Finn before his evening patrol flight.

Life goes on. The fight goes on.


End file.
